Tesla CEO Elon Musk is ready to take The New York Times head-on over a "fake" review of the auto company's Model S sedan.

John Broder, a staff writer at The New York Times, recently tested out Tesla's Model S sedan on a road trip along the east coast. However, Broder’s final, published review spilled details of a failed trip and the many troubles the car gave him along the way.

The Model S sedan has an EPA rated 265-mile estimated range with an 85-kilowatt battery pack. This was the model provided to Broder for his road trip, and while other Model S testers were able to achieve about 300 miles under perfect conditions, Broder reported that the east coast's cold winter temperatures had severely depleted his charge on multiple occasions -- and bad advice from Tesla employees along the way only made matters worse. The car even eventually had to be towed.

Tesla Model S being loaded onto a flatbed after running out of "juice" [Image Souce: NYT]

Broder's report, released just last week, detailed a trip from the Washington area in Maryland to Norwich, Connecticut, with many stops in between including Newark, Delaware; New York City; Milford, Connecticut; Branford, Connecticut and Groton, Connecticut.

During his trip, Broder mentioned many instances where the battery suddenly depleted quickly and he had to call Tesla for assistance on how to maximize range between charging stops (which were about 200 miles apart from one another or less during the trip). He said he received different advice from different Tesla employees, and even bad advice from one that said to sit in the car for half an hour with the heat on a low setting in order to warm the battery after it depleted from an overnight stay in Groton.

At one point, the car even needed to be towed in Branford because the battery drained much sooner than anticipated.

When Broder published the article about his trip, Musk posted the following tweet:

Musk investigated the accusations by referring to the diagnostic data logged into the car from the actual journey. He discovered that the report wasn't entirely accurate, citing the car's data that suggests Broder was driving too fast at times, took a detour that he never mentioned in the article, and didn't charge the car completely.

Musk accused Broder of not following the car's instructions, which he was briefed on before the trip. The New York Times claimed he did.

“Our reporter followed the instructions he was given in multiple conversations with Tesla personnel,” The New York Times said in a statement. “He described the entire drive in the story; there was no unreported detour. And he was never told to plug the car in overnight in cold weather, despite repeated contact with Tesla.”

Musk said he would publish the driving log from the trip soon to prove that Broder lied in his report.

This isn't the first time Musk has gone after those who gave his company's vehicles poor reviews. In March 2011, Tesla's Roadster made an appearance on the UK car show "Top Gear," where the car overheated, had brake issues and had a range of only 55 miles on track conditions. Tesla sued BBC for libel and malicious falsehood, but an English court threw it out stating that the estimated ranges are always affected by driving conditions and that there was no basis for libel claim.

"And he was never told to plug the car in overnight in cold weather, despite repeated contact with Tesla.”

Really, Telsa couldn't be this stupid.

ANY fool that lives where it snows knows that cold weather depletes battery power. Not plugging in a battery powered car overnight when it cold is just not knowing common sense about cars and batteries!

On the other hand I, common sense tells me that in cold weather, temps at and below 32 F, will shorten the range of the Tesla, whether Musk wants to believe it or not!

So the reporter DIDN'T plug it in to SEE what would happen, or did he like to be stranded?

Go to the Tesla site and take a look at the trip after Norwich. He left there with only 32 miles of range (he even wrote this in his NYT article), and tried to go 61 miles. Just what did he think was going to happen? And why would you drive past a charging station when you're low on charge and are being warned about it?

It turned out that he went 51 miles anyway, well above the projected remaining range.

You're thinking too much at a technical level. You have to be in the mindset of a normal petrol user. You park your normal car, let it sit overnight, get in and in the morning and it starts. Why should you have to plug in the car overnight? That is a huge burden and you must be near to a charging station/outlet or you are screwed.

This was farther into the trip. It says he stopped multiple times before this and that the stops were about 200ish miles away from each other, he already had to stop multiple times and recharge the car. He may have forgotten but that was his fault, not the cars. With driving an electric car and being briefed even he was fully aware it should have been plugged in. He knew all of this before the trip and should have planned (provided he was of moderate intelligence) out to be near an outlet.

Absolutely. Listen, this car, like all electric vehicles, has a target market that is not the average buyer.

Realistically anybody buying a $106,000 car is going to garage it daily, and in many cases, a heated garage. This isn't the kind of car you let sit on the street overnight on a daily basis in Brooklyn or Chicago...

I await the logs. If the guy didn't fully charge the car and reported the story this way, he should be fired. The NYT is better than this.

quote: Realistically anybody buying a $106,000 car is going to garage it daily

True, i drive secondhand $4000 Think City EV daily to work, next to my GS450h for long trips, (and two other cars for recreational use) and all my car's stands in the garage.

quote: and in many cases, a heated garage.

Who the hell heats his hole garage, that just a real waste of energy!

I live in Norway and -4F or -20c is noting special, but i certainly have not my garage heated, but the battery pack in my EV will heat up when charging, also if its full, and if its cold, if you leave it on the charger it still warms up the battery.

Also my petrol cars here have a heating element in the engine block, to heat up the oil, that works on a timer.

you're right about that. swappable batteries will have to be the only real solution for this technology. charge times and frequencies aren't ever going to improve that much. but then again these battery packs are not at all lightweight or cheap (yet), and it would be an absolute pain to switch them out each week.

electric cars aren't going to pan out because of the batteries. you simply cant store enough energy as electric potential for it to be dense or agile enough to power cars. much less personal flying vehicles, which will become common once we have super dense energy storage.

1 KW/h is about 3600000 joules, so a 85kw/h pack (assuming it's drained and charged fully, for ease) can contain 306 million joules of energy.

So no matter what time you take to charge that battery pack, it'll still take 306 million joules of energy to get it charged fully.

Now, all the electricity we use is also generated right now, we have no form of long term mass storage of energy. Meaning shut off all powerplants in the US, the entire US goes dark.

So here's our problem. Even if you manage to create some supercondutor hyper technology that's capable of delivering 306 million joules of electricity in just 1 second, you need to generate 306 million joules of energy in 1 second.

let's say the average nuclear powerplant has an output of 1000 megawatt/hour, or 1 million kilowatt/hour, or 3,6 trillion joules in an hour. Hour has 3600 seconds, so 1 billion joules each second.

In short, you'd need the entire output of a nuclear power plant to charge just 3 tesla model S's for s econd. If a 4th charges within the same second, you're screwed, all the transformers in the powerplant will blow. And that's assuming NOBODY else is using any power from that powerplant during that second or the first tesla you plug in blows up the entire plant.

Now ofcourse, that's ad absurdum, but the problem still stands. If it takes a minute instead of a second, the powerplant doesn't blow untill the 181th car, but at the same time it's just as likely you'll get 180+ cars charging in a minute as it is getting 4 cars charging just a second.

And that's completly ignoring the issue of heat transfer and the fact not just the charging equipment but the powerlines from the powerplant all the way to the charging equipment have to be able to handle that many joules of electricity each second. Not just a second, they have to be constantly fed with electricity.

I'm no scientist but even i can see elecricity isn't a mass adoption option untill we find a way to store high densities for long periods of time without significant leakage (there can be some, gasoline is useless after a year too after all). Then swapping those modules out instead of recharging on the spot is just a logical next step.

The two are intrinsically linked. You cannot change physics, but the charge technology can be modified within the bounds of physics - the only limit here being time, inward investment and clever people.

Assuming that a piece of technology will remain fixed is silly and illogical. As are the numbers you quote.

quote: Now ofcourse, that's ad absurdum, but the problem still stands. If it takes a minute instead of a second, the powerplant doesn't blow untill the 181th car, but at the same time it's just as likely you'll get 180+ cars charging in a minute as it is getting 4 cars charging just a second.

No, the problem does not still stand. The second argument is just as absurd.

Your 1GW powerplant is about 1/1000th of the nation's capacity, so we'll divide the nation's light-duty driving (2.6 trillion VMT) by 1000. Let's pretend 50% of that instantly went to electric, so we're looking at 1.3 billion electric miles per year driven by the people served by the powerplant in your example.

EVs get 3-5 miles per kWh, so even taking the lowest efficiency, we'd only need 430 GWh of energy per year. That's less than 5% or this power plant's annual production. And guess what: far more capacity than that sits idle at night due to the demand curve, ripe for usage by EVs.

The overload scenario you drew up is absurd. 1.3 billion miles * 3kWh/mile = 430 GWh = 5 million charges per year of the 85kWh EV you speak of. Assuming they are all 1 minute-charges, that's 9.5 per minute. Plug this into a Poisson distribution, and you find the chance that 181 or more cars simultaneously ultra-quick-charge in the same minute is 10^-160, or <10^-154 per year:http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=365*24*60*Sur...That's astronomically rare. In fact, even more so.

If you waited the age of the universe, you'd still only have a 1 in 10,000 chance of ever seeing 50 cars simultaneously doing 1 min quick charging, let alone 181. Moreover, most charging will be done at night over many hours, and even 5-min charging times are fast enough.

The reality is that we already have all the generating capacity we need for EVs. That's not the problem. It's one of cost reduction.I'm no scientist but even i can see elecricity isn't a mass adoption option untill we find a way to store high densities for long periods of time without significant leakageNo, you most certainly are not. Leakage isn't a problem either (Li-ion leak a couple percent per month).

quote: So here's our problem. Even if you manage to create some supercondutor hyper technology that's capable of delivering 306 million joules of electricity in just 1 second, you need to generate 306 million joules of energy in 1 second.

The majority of US gasoline pumps deliever gasoline at a rate of less than 5 gal per minute.

For a car the size of a Tesla Model S, this is roughly 100 miles/minute.

For a car the size of a Prius C, this is roughly 300 miles/minute.

To acchieve the same refueling rate, the Battery of a Tesla Model S must recieve a total energy input of 38 kWh in 1 minute (85 kWh battery) or 35 kWh in 1 minute (60 kWh version in the article).

Using the Department of Energy transmission factor of ~.92 typical efficieny (eia.org) for power lines, this means a power rate equal to ~2400 kW. This is of course if you insist on meeting the same refuel rate requirements.

I am not sure why you convert this to Joules. Maybe you just want a huge number? Since the typical Dryer uses 1.5 kW, we are talking about 1,600 dryers at a time!

quote: And that's completly ignoring the issue of heat transfer and the fact not just the charging equipment but the powerlines from the powerplant all the way to the charging equipment have to be able to handle that many joules of electricity each second. Not just a second, they have to be constantly fed with electricity.

2400 kW of power can be safely delievered. Here is one generator that does just that

Battery technology is the limit here. Not connection or generator technology which has the ability to be sized for much higher loads. It takes a -very- large battery array to accept 2400 kW power influx.

#2.

quote: let's say the average nuclear powerplant has an output of 1000 megawatt/hour, or 1 million kilowatt/hour, or 3,6 trillion joules in an hour. Hour has 3600 seconds, so 1 billion joules each second.

Close. The average nuclear reactor is typically around 1000 MW. A plant typically consists of 2 to 4 reactors.

I am not sure why your insisting on delieverying close to 250 miles of range in 1 second. In a more realistic charge time to align with current gasoline refueling, a single Nuclear Reactor can handle upto 415 Tesla Model S refueling at the same time.

#3.

quote: Now, all the electricity we use is also generated right now, we have no form of long term mass storage of energy. Meaning shut off all powerplants in the US, the entire US goes dark.

Not true. There is something called pumped hyrdo power. We (the US) have the ability to store around 5% of power for reuse later (we only get 4% back, so its a net loss in power).

Our power network does have significant problems in that many areas got built to differing standards, but they are all interconnected.

The load that electric cars would put on the grid would be acceptable if a pattern of charging emerged allowing for appropriate choices to be made up front.

Having hundreds of electric cars wanting to charge at the same rate as a gasoline car all in a very localized area would indeed cause a nightmare. Not significantly more than say the Super Bowl causing everyone to buy a new High Power TV and all watch the same event at the same time though...

EVs will probably never have the same rate of recharge that gasoline cars do. A second question should be asked, since EVs only require quick charging -occasionally- how convient is it to have 100 miles/minute versus 50 miles/minute versus 10 miles/minute?

New York to Los Angeles is ~2800 miles and takes 41.5 hours in a gasoline car at posted speed limits. At 10 miles/minute this same trip would take ~46 hours in a Model S.

If the "cost" of owning a EV is that long trips take an extra 10% longer, but I don't have the visit the gas station during the year, the time factor is very close to a wash out.

quote: There is something called pumped hyrdo power. We (the US) have the ability to store around 5% of power for reuse later (we only get 4% back, so its a net loss in power

A bit off topic, but I've been looking everywhere for storage numbers. Where did you get it?

Your statement is a bit off, though. You can't "store around 5% of power", because energy is what you store/release and power is merely how fast you do it. Do you mean 5% of a day's energy? Or do you mean the energy stored can be released at a rate that equals 5% of generated power (i.e. ~55GW)?

Pumped Hydro generation capacity is not the same as storage capacity, and the latter is the important metric for making wind/solar usable.

I meant, that ~5% of power can be converted to Pumped Hydro Stored Energy if all the projects I've seen come online. "Pumped Hyrdro Energy Generation" loses a significant fraction of this energy however. The longer between the storage and generation cycles, the worse, but overall this is minor. So I mixed Power and Energy. (Though the power coming from the location is also less than the power required to feed it at max rate)

quote: Pumped Hydro generation capacity is not the same as storage capacity, and the latter is the important metric for making wind/solar usable.

It is and it is not. If all the installation are only capable of ~50 GW, that the highest power output that you can expect. This would be important if the grid is overloaded by a relatively short duration item (like 10,000 sports fans requiring quick recharge in the same hour) The quantity stored is very important as well, but unfortunately I haven't seen a credible study that suggests that enough "good" locations exist to allow the transfer to large scale deployments of Wind/Solar without Natural Gas backup. Pumped Hydro is just not enough to account for weeks long variations.

Nuts, I guess we're both in the dark with regards to US storage capacity.

The only place on earth I have seen wind power make sense is New Zealand. They have these high elevation lakes that collect rainwater and snow melts which can be drained when power is needed. They have 4GWh of storage, which is about a whole month of power for their 4.4M population.

If you're taking a road trip and have to stay at a motel over night I guess you have to park it by your room and run a long extension cable out to the car or something.

It could be he didn't plug it in overnight because one day he drove 100 miles and was expecting to drive only 100 the next day. With its advertised range 200 would've been safe or so he thought. My guess anyway.

Umm, the Tesla's batteries are actually swappable, I believe. That was a basic of the design, that you could swap the batteries at need with minimal tools and quickly. At least that was said while it was in development.

Yeah right. At least 98+% of all car owners don't even change their own oil or do any maintenance whatsoever. I can really see people swapping battery packs (which weigh a LOT) on their EV's in the future lol.

Cold weather does not deplete batteries. The uncharged portions of a battery can be perminantly damaged by exposure to extreme temperatures, but that isn't the same as the temperature depleting it on its own. Cold weather also reduces the efficiency of batteries. The end result may appear the same to the casual observer but it is a pretty big distinction. The energy in a battery (joules) remains relatively constant regardless of temperature exposure.

Batteries don't store electric energy, they store chemical engergy. The chemical energy needs to be converted to electric power and converted again to become mechanical energy. Cold conditions reduce the efficiency of both of these conversions which leads to greatly reduced vehicle range in electric vehicles.

Cold weather reduces the range of gas powered cars as well, as much as 20% in single digit temperatures (F). The NY times report doesn't really offer much valid data in terms of cold weather vehicle range. It is mostly just complaints about poor range estimations on the part of the car's displays. I wouldn't surpise me if Telsa failed to account for cold weather efficiency losses in their on-the-fly range estimations.

It would very honestly surprise me if he did not account for this. Elon Musk is not an idiot and knows a lot about batteries, his cars, and their ranges. He knew going into this that there would be a hit due to colder weather. What was not accounted for was this idiot from NYT driving extra distance, not charging the vehicle, and then not reporting those extra details. That is more distance the battery went on and was not charged, saying that it didn't perform near expected and NOT reporting that you forgot to charge is that guy's fault, not Tesla's. That is crap reporting and making the reader draw false conclusions that could hurt Tesla's image and possibly lose sales. Musk did the right thing fighting back the way he did and I hope the logs support him. I don't really much care for electric cars especially for this much money, but then again I'm not the target market. With saying that though I like the idea and someone at the vanguard of the tech pushing it forward is a winner in my book. Someone spouting off misinformation to a wide base should be punished, things like this hurt companies.

Also isn't it kind of creepy that the owner of a car company would look into your "logs" on your car, and possibly post information about those logs publicly? Just because you said something he doesn't like?

When Top Gear reviewed the Tesla Roadster, they fabricated a story of the car running out of battery and requiring tow. Logs indicated that this didn't actually occur; thus the story was fiction. I think there was something else that was exaggerated that I can't recall.

quote: If this $100k car can't handle being driven at speeds alot of Americans drive on the highways it's a glorified golf cart.

It can, just don't expect the 275 mile range the EPA estimated, that is calculated at 55mph, not 75mph, just like every other car.

One difference between EVs and gas cars is that EVs are less efficient in the highway but are more efficient in the city, while gas cars are the inverse of that.

Tesla made a huge mistake in having this review done with only two supercharger stations in the east coast, they definitely should have had more stations rolled out before doing this, especially since cold weather does affect the range.

As for Musk's "whining", I'll take a little personality over the cold, unresponsive, PR crap everyone seems to complain about from the other businesses.

quote: This evaluation was intended to demonstrate its practicality as a “normal use,” no-compromise car, as Tesla markets it. Now that Tesla is striving to be a mass-market automaker, it cannot realistically expect all 20,000 buyers a year (the Model S sales goal) to be electric-car acolytes who will plug in at every Walmart stop.

If you use the car like a normal car you begin to find out how limiting the EV experience is going to be. That should be fairly portrayed.

If Elon made a Model S where the front trunk had a tiny 30hp engine with a generator and 5 gallon tank, it'd add maybe $4000 to the 40kWh base model's cost. Such a car would offload 90%+ of driving to electricity (so who cares if the 10% gas mileage is only 25 MPG), and range would be effectively unlimited and much better than the expensive 85 kWh version.

In the immediate future, you maybe right. I'd not count out fuel cell vehicles in a slightly longer timeframe though. They are basically EVs but carry their energy in a different form.

One very hard to get around problem with pure EVs (as already mentioned in the comments) is the recharging time. To move a lot of energy quickly requires high voltages and/or high currents. Neither of which the present street wiring or house wiring support. That means hours of time spent charging the car. Perhaps just a minor hassle if you own a home, not so minor if you're cruising the highways or live in an apartment. To that end Elon has chosen his market more wisely than Nissan has.

quote: I'd not count out fuel cell vehicles in a slightly longer timeframe though

Fuel cells have an infrastructure problem.

Yes, pure EVs have a recharging time problem, but it's not a problem for PHEVs. They're built to charge overnight to offload daily driving loads to the grid, and whenever recharging time gets in the way, gas is there.

quote: Perhaps just a minor hassle if you own a home, not so minor if you're cruising the highways or live in an apartment. To that end Elon has chosen his market more wisely than Nissan has.

I suppose, but googling shows me that only 9-13% of new homes don't have a garage/carport, so we're looking at tens of millions of households that can charge overnight.

People in apartments probably aren't a big part of the new car market anyway.

Unless the NYT reporter took a Ferris Bueller type detour or purposefully sabotaged the test drive Musk is not helping by chastising the reporter for "driving too fast" or not "following instructions".

The test drive should be done in the same manner as any other car.

Who the f$*# wants a car that you have to baby in order not to run of of juice?

So the guy take it out for a "real world" type of drive, and gets 200 miles max. What's new?

Folks live in hot, live in cold, forget to plug in overnight, etc, etc, etc. If a "family" car can't do all that without intensive babying, this is what happens.

Sorry, but electric vehicles are STILL the toys of the folks who live in medium-temp climates in urban areas for around town driving. I'll consider them when/if they will get greater than 400 miles, and can be recharged in 15 minutes. They are toys for the rich that should not be subsidized my tax dollars.

Except a gas car car be filled anywhere in the nation in 5 minutes... and if you are dumb and run out of gas, any tow truck can get you on the road in seconds via the 5 gallon fuel can they carry around.

Having to sit for hours to get on your way after depleting a battery or being forced to have special routes in order to live within your range means that the range on electric cars needs to be FAR greater than a gas car in order to have equal functionality.

Musk is a cock. Nobody likes someone who's so in the tank for his own cause, he acts like a crying baby throwing a tantrum when everyone out there just can't get on board with his "vision".

The guy tries to sue Top Gear twice, twice!!?? And loses because he had NO case both times. If anyone talks about his product frankly, he flips out and goes on a crusade. Seriously, it's VERY unflattering behavior.

Tesla should be old enough to realize he's too close to this thing to be objective, and should honestly shut the fuck up sometimes.

I don't get it... It seems all of the complaining and whining about electric is because it's electric?

I don't see how people can even try to compare a purely electric vehicle with gasoline engines -- I mean, isn't it obvious by now that EVs are not gasoline? That buying an EV means you have to charge it regularily, drive it sensibly, and follow directions?

I find it hard that an automotive journalist would be so pig headed as to treat this car as 'just another car'. Because it's clearly not.

This fact has been true since the first days of the GM EV1.

Ford didn't sue Top Gear because the Ford GT only got 4MPG... it's one of those things that requires common sense. Place the car in an appropriate context, and judge it accordingly.

If it's -40, do you NOT plug in your car and expect it to start? no.

If you don't top off your gas tank when it's running half full, will you get a full tank's worth of range out of it? unlikely.

If you call a dealership and ask them for mileage saving tips, do you think you'll get an engineering response? I doubt it.

Does the EV fail as an extended range EV or gasoline car -- hell yeah. duh. But does it succeed as an EV? That's what should be answered.

People didn't bitch about the EV1 as much as we seem to now and with EVs that are 100's of times better.

quote: I don't get it... It seems all of the complaining and whining about electric is because it's electric?

I don't see how people can even try to compare a purely electric vehicle with gasoline engines -- I mean, isn't it obvious by now that EVs are not gasoline? That buying an EV means you have to charge it regularily, drive it sensibly, and follow directions?

I find it hard that an automotive journalist would be so pig headed as to treat this car as 'just another car'. Because it's clearly not.

It's the EV proponents who see it as whining and complaining. Most of it is just comparison.

See, 99.99% of people have experience driving gasoline cars. 0.01% have experience driving electric cars. If you're reviewing an electric car and want to write a review which 99.99% of people can relate to and understand, you compare it to gasoline cars. The NYT writer wasn't writing an article for you, the guy who knows all about EVs. He was writing it for the 99.99% of people who know nothing about EVs.

The lack of a 5 minute quick-charge is a drawback which needs to be stressed in every EV car review until EVs are common enough that it's just "common knowledge". The EV proponents don't like it when it's mentioned, but that's their bias getting in the way. It'd be grossly negligent for a review to fail to mention it when it's something every gasoline car driver who reads the review takes for granted. When the horseless carriage was first introduced, I imagine there were similar newspaper reviews stressing that if you let it run out of gas, it would completely die and leave you stranded. Unlike a tired horse which could be coaxed into traveling a few miles further.

I have spent quality time in cold weather, like Northern British Columbia cold. Everywhere you park there is a post with electrical plugs. You park, connect it to a plug hanging out of your car's snout. This runs heaters overnight that prevent various fluids from freezing.

Simple, easy. Someone shows it to you once and then you do it.

Here we have an electrical car that, gasp, needs to be charged. Whats next, my phone sucks because when I did not charge it the battery died :-(

This reporter is stupid and probably flunked math and basic critical thinking.

Elon needs to get Consumer Reports on his payroll before they go all anti C MAX on him.

"A politician stumbles over himself... Then they pick it out. They edit it. He runs the clip, and then he makes a funny face, and the whole audience has a Pavlovian response." -- Joe Scarborough on John Stewart over Jim Cramer